Harris American maps a regional path for smarter recycling balers

By Olivia Hart

Harris American operates from four locations in the United States and traces Harris to 1889, when the business produced farm equipment. The company now combines International Baler, American and Harris, drawing on what GiGi Gebhardt describes as almost 300 years of combined manufacturing in the country.

Harris shifted from farm equipment into other machinery and baling after World War II. International Baler and American began producing balers in 1945 and 1946 to handle waste streams from manufacturing facilities. Gebhardt linked that decision to a generation that grew up during the Depression and returned from war looking to avoid waste.

Uriah Kiser hosted Gebhardt for episode 10 of the Resource Recycling Podcast during the annual E-Scrap: The Longevity Conference at the Hyatt Regency in New Orleans. She described applications ranging from small retail users to paper producers, shredders, plastic scrap and metal recycling. Her commercial test was plain: if recycling cannot be done profitably, it will not happen. Harris American has scale rather than nimbleness, she said, so the company must stay responsive to each application.

What has changed in the machines?

Over the past 10 to 15 years, Gebhardt said, the central change has been operational awareness. Harris American has modernized reporting, machine applications and operator communication while making equipment smarter and safer.

Gebhardt described the industry's labor force as a challenge and said: "People need to go home after every shift. Nobody wants to be responsible for an unsafe machine." Safety and machine performance now carry equal weight with compression capacity.

Her example of durability was a metal press in Georgia. It entered service in 1957, and she said it remained in metal recycling service. She also said Harris equipment is built to last, with upgrades giving facilities reports on efficiency and electrical draw.

Gebhardt described recyclers as manufacturers: they take waste as a raw material and put it back into use. That makes operational data part of the product, not an optional extra.

The modern baler must do two jobs: compress material and prove how well the operation performs.

Why does transport cost decide the system?

At regional and municipal levels, rural recycling faces an access problem because operators must get the bin to the consumer. At the industrial level, more city and urban ordinances now request or require recycling, according to Gebhardt.

She argued that the response should be regional and smaller than the state because transportation is recycling's largest cost. She illustrated the constraint with two movements: a truck delivers a baler to the customer, and a truck carries recovered material to the foundry.

Gebhardt said: "Transportation is everything. A hub-and-spoke system to manage recyclables, both post-consumer and post-industrial, is probably one of the strongest things you can offer."

She warned that true recycling numbers are hard to establish because input and output do not match. Harris American tries to close that reporting gap through communication with communities, manufacturers and business owners about what they handle and how they handle it.

The practical unit of recycling is the region, because geography sets the freight bill.

What does Texas advocacy need to change?

Gebhardt also used E-Scrap to discuss the digital divide. She described a generation aged 15 to 25 that may lack a laptop or computer and said she met organizations that take in recycled laptops, clean them and distribute them within communities. The hardware is part of the material chain, even when the chain begins with access rather than collection.

Her route into the industry began after raising children and working as an organic gardener. On returning to the workforce, she set a personal mission to increase recycling in Texas. She has served on the State of Texas Alliance for Recycling (STAR) board and worked to improve recycling processes.

She also became involved in legislative work in Texas and nationally, focusing on educating lawmakers that recycling extends beyond blue-bin collection. She described the sector as a manufacturing staple tied to jobs and resources. Asked for her favorite Texas city, she answered Fort Worth.

The next milestone is regulatory and commercial at once: whether municipal ordinances and state policy create enough predictable volume for regional hubs to operate economically and deliver recyclable material to end markets. Harris American can refine the machine and its reporting. It cannot make the freight bill disappear. Until policy produces dependable regional demand, smarter controls remain only half the solution.